Some of you know I make and sell handmade soap. Don’t get me started about store bought soap! (Unless you have a good half hour to spare). I fought joining Pinterest for a long time (I know you’re wondering where the heck those two idea connect! Bear with me.) Well I finally gave into Pinterest. I discovered (for me) it was a good way to book mark webpages I wanted to come back to. In the process I’ve started pinning my soaps and others as well. And today I came across a pin from another person for a couple vintage soap ads from the 1940s. You have to read these! They’re too fun not to share.

Vintage Ad 1: http://file.vintageadbrowser.com/l-27s6sk8u4j6d4r.jpg (Not sure who to give the credit to as this is the only link I have to them).

I spent Easter at my parents. After dinner I was sitting in the living room with my mom and I notice this little magazine on the floor. The back side was up and it caught my attention for two reasons. First, it was yellow with age. Second, the ad on the back paged seemed really out of date. I had to investigate. Turns out it was a magazine from 1982! The R & R Mixer ’82: Your Guide To the Latest Party Drinks and Snacks.

Magazine Cover.

I asked my mom about it and she said it was some magazine they got in Germany (when they were first stationed there, that note, they’ve kept for over thirty years!). It got filed away somewhere long ago. Recently my mom has been on a cleaning kick going through old files and boxes of stuff. I promptly confiscated the magazine. The R&R Mixer ’82 was published and circulated to the America Forces stationed in Europe. Their editorial and administrative offices were located at 17 Bismarchkstrasse in Heidelberg, West Germany. (I love that little detail! In 1982 Germany was still divided!). It was a private firm that wasn’t connected with NATO.

The magazine contains articles and recipes on making drinks. The first page opens with “…the R&R Mixer, a magic elixir your guide to notions and party potions…” to be followed up a couple pages later with “…Wine, Wine–how divine; Champagne, Champagne–creme de la creme…” They might be cheesy but they make me laugh! The whole magazine is full of titles like these.

But that’s not the best part! Nope, the best part are the advertizements in the magazine! Oh my word. I was cracking up at some of them and they all brought back memories! So without further ado here are my top three favorite ads.

Third Place goes to…Dual-Standard Trinitron Sony TV. This amazing TV allowed us to watch TV not only in America, but in Europe! A compatible TV! Technology was progressing!

"With just one set, you can enjoy both America and Europe!"

Second Place goes to… Toshiba’s 50/60Hz microprocessor-controlled microwave oven! Which also “plugs in on both sides of the Atlantic.” You might have to have lived in Europe (as an American with your American appliances) to really get a chuckle out of this. But, I remember having to buy “new” appliances because we couldn’t use the ones we’d bought in America in Europe. And just a side note, that microwave looks like it should be in a museum! And yet I remember using one just like it. (That makes me feel really old!)

and First Place: The Quintet – JVC’s new portable component system. Now come on, raise your hand if you remember carrying your boombox around with you. Heck I remember when I got a walkman and thought it was the greatest invention ever! How the times have changed!

"Five great performers that play perfectly together. Now you can enjoy true high fidelity both at home and on the road."

I hope you’ve enjoyed these ads as much as I have. They gave me a good laugh and brought me down memory lane.

Even though I’m a Valentine’s Day Scrooge, I decided to post photos of cards from the past. I had fun looking at old cards, many of which were geared toward children. (Does anyone else remember the embarrassment of passing out Valentine’s cards in your elementary school class?) There were also some cards that were so incredibly racist that I wouldn’t even think of posting them here. Times have definitely changed, thank goodness!

I stumbled across this when I was cleaning out an old lock box to use. I LOVE that because my Grandmother didn’t throw anything away this still survived! I mean who holds on to a money order receipt from 1962!?!?!

Remember my post last year on Ice Cream a la 1800s, where I talked a bit about the origins of ice cream and more specifically the first “ice cream” maker, called a sabottiere?

A little refresher: The sabottiere is the inner canister shown in the picture to the right. The prepared ingredients would be placed in the canister with the lid secured. The sabottiere was then placed in a bucket, and a mixture of ice and salt was packed around it. Then someone had to manually grab the handle and turn the canister clockwise and then counterclockwise for whatever length of time the recipe specified.

Labor intensive indeed!

The sabottiere was the ice cream maker of the 1700s, but by the 1800s it was on its way out as technology advanced and a new ice cream maker was introduced. This one functioned the same as the sabottiere, but had a hand crank that attached to the top. A person would turn the crank, which in turn rotated the sabottiere. It was a lot less work, and it made ice cream much faster. The design has stood the test of time. You can still find ice cream makers today (both electric and hand cranked) that are very similar to the mid-1800s ice cream maker.
There were two forms of ice cream:

Frozen ice, which was basically a mix of water or lemonade and fresh fruit (raspberries, cherries, currents, strawberries…).

Ice cream, made with milk, cream and eggs.

Here’s a recipe for Chocolate Ice Cream from the 1847 Lady’s Receipt Book by Eliza Leslie:

Scrape down half a pound of the best chocolate or of Baker’s prepared cocoa. Put it into a sauce-pan, and pour on it a pint of boiling milk. Stir, and mix it well, and smoothly. Then set it over the fire, and let it come to a boil. Mix together in a pan, a quarter of a pound of powdered loaf-sugar, and a pint of rich cream. In another pan beat very light the yolks of nine eggs. Afterwards gradually stir the beaten egg into the cream and sugar, and then put the mixture into a sauce-pan; stir in, by degrees, the chocolate; set it over the fire, and simmer it till it is just ready to come to a boil. Strain it through a sieve, transfer it to a freezer, and freeze it in the usual manner of ice-cream.

Did you know Fact Alert!

Did you know that Frederick Tudor was known as Boston’s “Ice King?” He founded the Tudor Ice Company during the early 19th century and made a fortune by harvesting ice in the winter from New England lakes and then selling it to the Caribbean and Europe.

Did you know that sugar was so abundant by the 1830s that an average person was consuming about 90lbs of sugar per year. Today the average person consumes over 156 lbs of sugar per year!

This letter gets me misty eyed every time I read it. Some things don’t change much over time. Sure we’ve got email today, but letters home to love ones haven’t changed much. Maybe it’s because my brother, after a very hard and sad deployment, has just returned home that this letter especially gets to me.

I have to smile at the end as he ends the letter “x x x x x x x x x” Lots of kisses! I can, to some degree, understand this longing to be with your love one. This great great (not sure exactly how many) uncle never made it home. He gave his life fighting in Italy during WW2.

Today’s Veterans Day. Take a moment to thank a soldier. So many have served this great country. So many have paid the ultimate price and gave their lives for this country.

This is an appointment card that I’m still trying to figure out exactly how the payments worked! It’s probably a small thing, but one that’s fascinated me and had me coming back to study it time and again!

You are currently browsing the archives for the Old goodies! category.

The Damsels

Jennifer, Emilie, and Tricia met while they were graduate students in Seton Hill University's Writing Popular Fiction program. They bonded over their love for children's and young adult fiction, especially all types of historical fiction, and their desire to see their books in print.